The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
Gerard O’Donovan On My Wavelength
Get in the mood for St Patrick’s Day with tonight’s Archive on 4: It Must Be Wonderful to Be Free (Radio 4, 8pm) marking 60 years since the death of Brendan Behan. Like many whose fame was founded as much on notoriety as talent, Behan’s writerly reputation has faded over time. But, looking back, novelist Megan Nolan rejects the trap of viewing Behan as Ireland’s most famous drunk, and rediscovers instead a gifted anti-establishment figure whose work remains relevant today.
The greenery continues on Sunday morning with Cerys Matthews (Radio 6 Music, 10am) celebrating Paddy’s Day with a showcase of great Irish music past and present, plus guest performances from Oisín Leech and the Mary Wallopers. At the other end of the day comes one of the week’s more intriguing offerings, Ps and Qs (Radio 4, 11pm), a new, late-night discussion series. This week Vanessa Feltz explores narcissism, sitting down with a philosopher, a psychiatrist and a therapist to consider whether social media is making us a nation of self-obsessives.
Social media and its power to influence us is also the focus of Start the Week (Monday, Radio 4, 9am). Tom Sutcliffe’s guests – Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov, author Peter Pomerantsev and
MIT Technology Review editor Charlotte Jee – bring their perspectives to a fascinating discussion about how deep fakery is racing ahead at a pace far beyond regulation.
Dead Famous (Wednesday, Radio 4, 11.30am), Rosie Millard’s insightful series tracing the posthumous legacies of great painters, wraps up with Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. In her lifetime Kahlo’s work was overshadowed by that of her revolutionary muralist husband Diego Rivera. But in the years since her death she has emerged as a feminist icon, her worldwide fame eventually eclipsing his. How that came about – via films, books, marketing fads and global exhibitions – makes for another fascinating story.
Pop sensation Anastacia joins the BBC Concert Orchestra for a special one-off Piano Room event on Wednesday’s Vernon Kay show (Radio 2, 9.30am). Alongside her hits, she has also promised to cover a hit from heavy-metal balladeers Whitesnake. If you can drag your ears away from that, Inside the Wasp Factory (Radio 4, 11.30am) sees celebrity superfan Simon Pegg celebrate the 40th anniversary of the publication of one of the most admired British cult novels of recent decades,
Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory.
Emily Knight’s series Tracking the Planet (Thursday, Radio 4, 4pm) continues to yield treasure and pleasure. This week, the ways in which wildlife responds to shifts in nature – like how seabirds adapt their migration routes to fluctuating wind patterns over the equator – can tell us about climate change.
Finally, in a busy year that’s taken her from Glyndebourne to the New York Met and beyond, Friday’s Radio 3 in Concert (Radio 3, 7.30pm) sees Scottish mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill returning home to Glasgow for an evening with the
Scottish Chamber Orchestra. In a fantastic programme including Berlioz’s La mort de Cléopâtre and Peter Maxwell Davies’s An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise, another highlight is the world premiere of James MacMillan’s setting of Robert Burns’s poem Composed in August. Maxim Emelyanychev conducts.